U.s. Senate Race Of '50 Was Black Mark On Campaigning

FLASHBACK - ORANGE COUNTY HISTORY

The 1950 U.S. Senate race between incumbent Claude Pepper and Miami Congressman George Smathers ranks as probably the state's ugliest campaign ever.

Students of Florida political history agree that a key factor in the outcome was the support of Orlando newspaper publisher Martin Andersen for Smathers.

Ironically, Andersen had supported Pepper's bids for office since 1934, and they had a warm personal relationship, Ormund Powers writes in his biography, Martin Andersen: Editor, Publisher, Galley Boy.

But in late 1948, Orlando Morning Sentinel printers went on strike.

After Pepper refused Andersen's plea to intervene, the publisher turned against him, according to Powers' quotes of Andersen's contemporaries.

The next year, Andersen began writing columns and editorials criticizing Pepper's pro-labor stance and his promotion of welfare spending.

Billy Dial, who was the Sentinel's attorney, said of the 1950 campaign, ``It was totally anti-Pepper. Andersen didn't know George Smathers from anyone else. But he hated Claude. He didn't agree with his liberal policies,'' Powers recounts.

Andersen was the first major newspaper publisher in Florida to endorse Smathers in the race. Few days went by in which there wasn't a story or editorial in Andersen's morning or afternoon papers praising Smathers or critical of Pepper.

One outcome of the election is that it enhanced Andersen's clout, and politicians began seeking his support.

Time magazine claimed Smathers gave a speech in which everything he said was true. But it was crafted to make voters think Pepper was no one they would want in office, at least not those who lacked a large vocabulary.

The speech supposedly included these lines: ``His uncle was a flagrant heterosexual. His sister, who has always been obsessed by sects, once worked as a proselyte outside the church. His great aunt expired from a degenerative disease. His nephew subscribes to a phonographic magazine. ... Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, practiced celibacy.''

Smathers denied ever making the speech and even offered $10,000 to anyone who could prove he had. No one ever claimed the reward.

Smathers thought a political reporter with a vivid imagination and no regard for the truth made it up on a dull day.

The Pepper camp could also play dirty. Shortly before the election, doctored photographs of Smathers in a Ku Klux Klan costume were circulated in Dade County, which had many Jewish and black residents.

In a time when segregation was the rule here, ``Pepper was branded as a man who favored racial equality and race mixing,'' Powers writes.

Andersen criticized Pepper in print for denying that he had shaken hands with a black woman at a campaign stop in Sanford. He also claimed Pepper was too cozy with communists and blasted his support of ``the welfare state.''

Others tagged him with the nickname ``red Pepper'' for his supposed links to communists.

Former network TV commentator David Brinkley said the campaign stood out in his mind as the dirtiest in American history, Powers writes.

In the Democratic primary, Smathers got more than twice as many votes as Pepper in Orange County. His votes in Orange accounted for almost one-fifth of his winning margin statewide.

The morning after the election, which Andersen described as Smathers' ``sensational and wholesome unseating of Claude Pepper,'' he ran an unusual headline that is still talked about among politicians and journalists.

In all capital letters and in red ink, this ran in two lines across the top of the front page: PRAISE GOD FROM WHOM ALL BLESSINGS FLOW. WE HAVE WON FROM HELL TO BREAKFAST AND FROM DAN TO BEERSHEBA ... AND STAVED OFF SOCIALISM

Andersen said he had read that headline, minus the reference to socialism, in The New York Times in 1917 in reference to Lawrence of Arabia's victory over the Turks. He said that in his enthused frame of mind, he was ``searching for some explicit manner in which to express ourselves.''

Smathers said later, ``Except for the efforts of Martin Andersen, I never would have attained the position of a U.S. senator.''

He said Andersen never asked for anything for himself in return for his support. ``When he wanted to get something done for the community, he would call and say, `How's my old friend? Remember the guy who got you started?' I'd say, `What do you want now?''' Smathers once wrote.

Pepper, of course, would go on to serve 27 years in the U.S. House, from 1962 until his death in May 1989 when he was 88. Powers writes that Pepper was ``one of the most revered members of Congress and considered a champion of the nation's elderly.''

In his autobiography, Pepper wrote that the 1950 campaign ``is regarded by many historians as the most vicious to that point in our history, and perhaps the dirtiest of all time. I never knew what hit me.''

Pepper also wrote that the brutal race had affected his wife, Mildred's, health and he could not forgive those who had done that to her. Nevertheless, Powers writes, Pepper invited his nemesis, Andersen, to her funeral in 1981. Andersen was too ill to attend but wrote a warm note in response.

Smathers, who retired after 18 years in the Senate to resume his law practice, still lives in Miami Beach. He is 85.

This week in Orange County history:

In a referendum to decide whether to move the county seat in 1889, Sanford got 724 votes to Orlando's 1,907.

Electricity was extended to the Christmas area in 1947.

Winter Garden's new post office was dedicated in 1953.

The reconstructed 1837 fort was dedicated at Fort Christmas Park in 1977.